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Manage to catch the always ebullient and friendly Marc Bender, EFX Capital – a unique business model combining family office/ a proprietary trading house. Refreshingly open with an active allocation to over 43 equity managers, Marc is all about finding new talent – early… and hooray in direct contrast to other end investors– loves it when managers approach him with a new idea. So what refreshes? “Any type of travel out of the home zone is so therapeutic it provides the detachment to the day to day chaos of 100s of emails, 100s of calls ..”

Rushing to my next appointment at Blackstone I narrowly avoid being crushed by an extremely large lady dressed in vivid green. Compose myself in time to meet Bruce Amlicke, CIO, Blackstone Group, where we discuss the world, the markets and his take on what’s happening. Classic Western of all Time? A movie buff, Bruce says it has to be Clint in “The Good, the Bad and The Ugly“.

I thought New York addresses were supposed to be dead easy but Bear Stearns Asset Management is a particularly challenging experience with an address on one Avenue and the entrance way over on another. Eventually reach my goal of meeting Jeffry Brown, Head of Strategic Initiatives, Bear Stearns Asset Management. With organic growth of major asset management businesses so hard to achieve, his role is to look for all acquisitions to consolidate their position in the hedge fund space. What interests him is that in the “midst of all the credit crunch carnage market optimism is clearly high as there is no shortage of good teams or companies on the market. “

I drop into to see Marsha Roth, MD, Angelo Gordon, a top league boutique in hedge funds, private equity, real estate and distressed - with an extraordinary reputation for stable teams and an enduring and sustainable culture. “With the dislocation of the credit markets we expect distressed securities to give excellent opportunities in both private equity and the distressed debt hedge fund” she explains. Just back from Egypt, the last leg of a Middle East tour, she was reading “Pharoahs“. ” But I’m never going back to Cairo again” she said firmly.